


Parallel Sunrises

by Vindensia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin tries to make sense of things, Multi, Obi-Wan tries to save the galaxy, Post-RotS Obi-Wan traveled to pre-tPM, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Together they try not to make bad decisions, and now he's just so done with everything, more characters and tags to be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22096855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vindensia/pseuds/Vindensia
Summary: Anakin pieces together the story from Master Qui-Gon: through snippets quietly confessed into his late-night tea, in anecdotes shared with trees in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, from nightmares hissed between clenched teeth.Anakin knows he isn’t Master Qui-Gon’s first Padawan. But he thought he had a good idea what the previous Padawans were like.But nothing, not even Master Qui-Gon’s incomplete stories, could have prepared Anakin for the force of nature that is Obi-Wan Kenobi.Obikin. Time-traveler!Obi-Wan
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 42
Kudos: 594





	Parallel Sunrises

**Author's Note:**

> What am I doing? What have I done?  
> I have so many WIPs and this is what I post first?  
> I guess I regret nothing.

As Anakin Skywalker disembarks his ship, he feels the oppressive heat scorching his lungs. Mustafar churns beneath his feet, the volcanic planet spewing corrosive gas and sending glowing embers flying into the atmosphere. Although he landed on a durasteel platform behind a repulsor field, he feels the lava rivers and roiling magma acutely. If the planet were any hotter, Anakin would swear he’s being burned alive.

“Artoo,” Anakin shouts to the astromech situated in the socket beside his starfighter’s cockpit. “Watch the ship for me. Master Kenobi’s last known location is inside this building. I should be out soon.”

Artoo whistles an affirmation followed by a series of beeps.

Anakin whirls around, his tabards flaring and slapping his thighs. He points a gloved finger at Artoo. “Hey, how was I supposed to know they’d be waiting to ambush me? It’s not my fault I get all the missions that end with someone being kidnapped.”

Artoo whistles something that sounds suspiciously like laughter.

Anakin waves a hand and heads for the door to the complex. There’s no point trying to convince Artoo all the missions he gets are destined to end in him suffering. The droid is too stubborn and opinionated. “Just watch,” he shouts over his shoulder, “I’ll be back before you know it! We’ll see who’s laughing then.”

His synthleater booths hit the decking in time with each clang from the nearby refinery. According to the mission file, the Techno Union established stations and complexes across Mustafar, saving billions of credits harvesting molten minerals by simply skimming the surface of lava flows using droids. The droids themselves hover over the molten rivers like insects. They buzz and swoop, catching their molten prize in buckets attached to short, spindly arms.

For the most part, the Techno Union remotely controls the factories, complexes, and refineries. Native Mustafarians handle local administrative work and repairs, but corporate presence is based off world. Anakin didn’t expect to run across too many lifeforms.

So, when the door opens and a man collides with him, Anakin is swept off his feet and hits the durasteel decking. Hard.

A plume a flimsiplast flutters in the noxious air, glowing in the light of the lava like lightning bugs from Naboo. Through the storm of fluttering paper, a head pokes its way into Anakin’s line of sight. A man. He glows red in the hazy light of Mustafar. His eyebrows crinkle together above a set of dark eyes, and Anakin can vaguely make out a shadowed frown forming beneath a bushy beard.

“Hello there,” the man says.

Anakin, still reeling from crashing into the man, accepts the outstretched hand automatically. His brain reboots when he’s on his feet, watching the man gather the scattered flimsiplast.

“When I requested the Council—” the man starts. Anakin hears a crisp Coruscanti accent curl around the man’s words, “—to send a new ship, I expected a freighter, at least. Now, a starfighter? Not subtle at all.”

“Wait. New ship?” Anakin asks, incredulously. “Who are you?”

The man grabs the sheets of flimsiplast scattered around Anakin’s feet, adding them to the stack clutched in one cloaked arm. “Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re the one dropping off a ship for me, yes?”

“No!” Anakin sputters.

This finally gets the man’s attention. He drags his eyes from the flimsiplast to Anakin’s boots, slowly meandering his way up Anakin’s legs. His slow perusal of Anakin’s wardrobe pauses when he reaches Anakin’s tabards. Then the man’s eyes snap from the lightsaber hanging from Anakin’s belt—glinting dully in the warm light of Mustafar—to Anakin’s face. A myriad of microexpressions contorted the man’s face far too fast for Anakin to decipher.

Finally, Master Kenobi’s face settles in a dull bemusement. A smile tickles his beard, but doesn’t quite reach those dark, shadowed eyes. “Oh, dear. I believe there must have been some miscommunication, then.”

Anakin pauses. And takes a deep breath, ignoring how his lungs burn. “I am not here to drop off a ship. I was assigned to escort you back to Coruscant, Master Kenobi.”

Master Kenobi shifts his weight. He drags a hand through his beard. “Yes, definitely a miscommunication.”

Anakin remembers the Council meeting clearly. Master Windu gave explicit instructions to ‘drag Kenobi back to Coruscant’. And Anakin may be paraphrasing Master Windu’s words, but the Council and the mission file both agreed Master Kenobi would be leaving Mustafar with Anakin. At no point did Anakin’s instructions indicate a possibility for miscommunication. Anakin says as much to Master Kenobi.

“Well” Master Kenobi said, “blast.”

Anakin startles.

Master Kenobi stares at the remaining flimsiplast sheets littering the deck. Slowly, he resumes collecting them. “I don’t suppose you could ignore my presence here and fly back to Coruscant saying you missed me by a few hours,” he asks.

“No.”

“Well, I tried.” Master Kenobi shrugs. He rocks back on his heels, slowly uncurling his body until he stands at full height before Anakin. He is slightly shorter than Anakin and, if Anakin didn’t read Master Kenobi’s personnel file in the Archives, Anakin would say he looks unimpressive. Sweaty hair flops about his face, and torn, blackened, baggy robes make him look like a beggar from the lower levels of Coruscant.

But, no. The man standing before Anakin defeated the first Sith seen in millennium. His combat prowess, diplomatic, and investigative skills earned him the youngest Mastery in centuries without ever taking a Padawan. Master Kenobi was a legend in among the Padawans. Anakin grew up hearing rumors of the man. He wonders how many were true.

“So, about that ship,” Master Kenobi says.

“What ship?”

The other man’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. He levels Anakin a _look_. “The ship I’m supposed to use to return to Coruscant. Unless, somehow, there’s seating for two on your starfighter.” Master Kenobi waves a hand at said starfighter which Anakin knows only has one seat.

But Master Kenobi had to have gotten to Mustafar somehow.

“Where’s your ship?” Anakin asks.

For the first time since meeting the man, a glint of humor streaks across Master Kenobi’s face. “Ah, yes. My ship. The reason I contacted the Council requesting a new one.” The shadows deepen in the corners of his eyes and a smile blooms, slow and warm like a sunrise. Anakin doesn’t like that smile. “I’m afraid it’s sitting at the bottom of a lava river right now. I should have checked the stability of the embankment I parked it on. But how was I to know it would break off and drop my ship into molten rock?”

Anakin turns his head and stares at a nearby lava river. He imagines the last ship Master Kenobi flew—a G9 Rigger-class light freighter, according to the flight bay logs—buried beneath the tons of flowing, molten rock.

“So, I’m assuming there is no other ship.” Master Kenobi says.

“No, there is no other ship,” says Anakin.

“ _Blast_.”

Anakin agrees.

“Well,” Master Kenobi starts, “I suppose I’ve been in tighter quarters before.”

Anakin turns to stare at the other man, quickly understanding what he means. “There is no other seat in the cockpit,” Anakin says, incredulously, “so, unless you want to fly the ship—which you won’t— you’ll be sitting in the storage area behind the pilot’s seat.”

Master Kenobi throws the hand not gripping the stack of flimsiplast in the air, looking _done_ with everything. Then he jabs it at Anakin’s ship. “As far as I know, your ship is the only way off Mustafar and, if you insist on bringing me back to Coruscant, we both need to, somehow, cram ourselves in there.” He pauses. “Unless you’ve decided not to drag me back to Coruscant.”

Anakin remembers his mission: bring Kenobi back. No exceptions. “No, you’re going back to Coruscant with me.”

Master Kenobi strides toward Anakin’s ship. “Then what are we waiting for? A hand-written invitation from Master Yoda? I, for one, would like to have gotten into a proper fresher yesterday.”

Before Anakin formulates an intelligible reply—likely to question the last time Master Kenobi used a fresher—the other man clambers onto the right wing of Anakin’s starfighter, keeping his balance remarkably well while clutching a stack of flamsiplast to his chest. But Anakin supposes this man is a Master for a reason.

Artoo wakes in a flurry of whistled questions when he feels the ship being jostled. Master Kenobi just pats his dome and murmurs what Anakin assumes is a greeting. By Artoo’s reply, Anakin assumes correctly.

“It’s okay, Artoo,” Anakin says. “That’s just Master Kenobi. He’s the person we’re here to find.”

Artoo whistles back.

“No, I’m not kidnapping him. Not every mission involves kidnapping.”

“Well,” Master Kenobi says from his spot behind the pilot’s seat. He wiggles his way between an obscenely large medikit, the starfighter’s hull, and the pile of robes Anakin stashed in the back. “I’m being dragged to a foreign planet against my wishes. You could say this is kidnapping.”

Anakin points a finger at the man contently nestled in his starfighter. “No, you decided to come willingly.”

Artoo beeps.

Anakin ignores the droid.

“I think this would be a marvelous time to leave, don’t you?” says Master Kenobi.

Anakin ignores the man too. Instead he climbs into the cockpit, belts himself in, and begins the launching sequence for takeoff. The starfighter’s clear canopy drags itself over the cockpit, sealing itself to the seams around the edge. Anakin charts a return flight course along the Hydian Way and Corellian Run hyperspace lanes in the navicomputer. When Artoo whistles his assent, the ship slowly lifts off the platform. Soon they break Mustafar’s hazy atmosphere and drift lazily in space above the planet. From above, Mustafar doesn’t look so volatile. With blinding white ribbons trailing through patches of crimson and gold, the planet could even be called pretty.

A low, lilting voice murmurs in Anakin’s ear, warm breath ghosting across his neck. “So, we should be back to Coruscant in nine hours, yes?”

Anakin jumps, smacking his head against the canopy. Artoo whistles, long and high.

“Yes,” Anakin groans, resisting the urge to rub at the new bruise, “nine hours.”

“Is your droid laughing at you?” Master Kenobi asks.

Anakin reaches across the console, flipping the hyperspace lever, turning the pinpricks of starlight beyond the cockpit into a riotous blue glow. “No,” Anakin lies. “That’s just how he says hello.”


End file.
